


Wicked Ways

by Frea_O



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bad Pick-Up Lines, Drinking, F/M, First Meetings, Slice of Life, Space Stations, science jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2832101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mechanics and Engineering don’t get along for obvious reasons. Too bad there’s a pesky engineer determined to be Raven’s friend. Some bonding moments with Raven and Wick on the Ark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wicked Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alethia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethia/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Alethia! I think I caught everything, but I apologize for any spelling and grammar errors, and I hope you enjoy this as much as I had fun writing Raven and Wick's banter! Spoilers up to _Spacewalker_.

_“C’mon, Reyes, you gotta enjoy life.”_  
 _“You enjoy enough for everybody.”_  
 **— Many Happy Returns**

The Ark Station was a miracle. Twelve stations, built with varying technologies and interfaces, crammed together by necessity and ingenuity, combined with a couple of centuries’ worth of hard use. Engineers liked to joke—well away from the hearing of the masses, of course—that it was a wonder the whole thing didn’t fall out of the sky in a fiery wreck every other Tuesday. This was always followed by a refrain of, “Oh, wait, it doesn’t! Because we exist.”

This was typically when any mechanic within hearing distance would roll his or her eyes.

But the nature of the hodgepodge meant that over the years, eccentricities had formed and had just as quickly become commonplace. The fact that Mechanics was on Mecha Station and the Engineering headquarters was on Power Station was probably the most inconvenient of these. Mechanics regularly pointed out that they should all get their zero-g qualifications, as the fastest way between the two headquarters was _clearly_ a spacewalk.

Two hours into her trek, Raven Reyes was tempted.

Communications had glitched in the middle of an important planning session, which meant that the usual pipeline and 3-D printer was a no-go. Sinclair already had two people on that job, but the pressure regulation in Hydra Station was a problem, so Raven had been sent to Engineering to collect the fabricated parts. At least she’d been smart enough to bring a canteen, but she couldn’t deny that this was just damned inconvenient, and she couldn’t wait until she was no longer the low man on the totem pole and somebody else had to make this walk.

Engineering was in a deathly quiet part of the Power Station. No wonder they were all crazy, Raven thought. She worked best in chaos: the noise of welding, the whirr of engines, the sounds of progress. Trying to think surrounded by nothing but silence was her personal hell. The quiet lasted only until she opened the door, and then she was assaulted by earth music, so loud that it actually hurt her ears. Raven clapped her hands over her ears as she stepped inside. Where Mechanics was a working bay, comfortably messy with spare parts always near at hand, Engineering was brightly lit and _white_. Giant holo-screens covered all of the walls, some cracked, others displaying schematics and broken down electrical components. Desks sat in neat, even rows like a schoolroom.

It was empty of the engineers themselves.

“Hello?” Raven called, shouting to be heard over the music. When nobody replied, she ventured further inside, stepping through a second door and into some kind of warehouse. The music was even louder here, but at least it seemed more familiar: shelves around the walls held a plethora of spare parts and equipment, and there were worktables absolutely covered with exposed wiring and printed parts. Where the other room had seemed sanitized and too bright, this one was cluttered and familiar, and even better, not empty of people. A man on a ladder had his back to her at the other end of the room.

“Hello?” Raven called again, this time louder.

He turned, looking up and around like he wasn’t sure he’d heard something. When he spotted her, he waved at her to stay put and leaned over so far he nearly overturned the ladder. He turned a dial, cutting off the crooning of the singer mid-note. “Stay right there!” he called.

“Why?”

“You’re Reyes, right? From Mecha Station?”

“And who are you?” Raven called back.

The man grinned. “I have the parts you need. Stand right there and hold your hand out.”

Raven blinked at him a couple of times. “I’m not going to do that,” she said.

He shrugged. “Your loss. Watch this,” he said, and tossed a paper airplane. 

It landed on the ground, its nose crumpled. “Is it supposed to do something?” Raven asked, unimpressed. She was tired from the walk, not looking forward to the trudge back with the parts, and this engineer was throwing paper airplanes?

The man grumbled. “Missed,” he said, and pulled a second paper airplane out of his pocket. “Let me try that again.”

“What exactly are you—”

The man tossed the airplane. This time, it hit a small blue ball on the worktable nearest him. The ball began to roll until it hit a tablet that had been resting on its side. The tablet fell over, knocking an empty coffee can off the table. The can rolled over a string on the floor, which seemed to be connected to…a sling shot? The string activated a widget that pulled on the rubber band until the little gripper end slipped free, shooting a ball-bearing clean across the storage room. It hit a target in front of the wall, knocking it back and dropping a bouncy ball from the piece of wood sitting atop the target.

“A Rube Goldberg machine?” Raven asked, watching the bouncy ball send yet another ball down a track that looked like it was made out of discarded bits of wire.

“Cool, right?” the engineer asked as the ball knocked over a row of dominoes. He banged his hands against the metal shelf in a passable drumroll. “Wait for it. Grand finale coming right up!” 

As grand finales went, this one was a little lacking. The dominoes knocked into a stylus, sending it rolling down a slight incline that had been created by an insulation panel. The pencil hit a see-saw that was already partially weighted by ball bearings, triggering another rope—and a bag insulated by a jacket dropped from the ceiling and landed at Raven’s feet.

“That’s why I told you to put your hands out!” The engineer was scrambling down the ladder now, a wide grin on his face. “Was that neat or what? I was going to add a bit with the bowling ball in the back, but you got here quicker than I anticipated.”

“Did you really just spend the past two hours building all of this?” Raven asked.

“Isn’t it great?” The engineer put his hands on his hips as he surveyed his triumph. Seeming to remember his manners, he held out a hand. “Wick, by the way. I never introduced myself.”

Raven ignored the hand. “Let me rephrase. You spent the past two hours building all of this, when instead you could have been just meeting me halfway with the supplies?”

“I wanted to impress you. They told us there was a hot-shot new wrench monkey in the house.” Wick rubbed his little goatee—apparently he had not opted into the permanent facial hair depilatory—and gave her a smile that grated over every single nerve in her body. She was struck with the irrational desire to drive her fist right into his smug engineering face. “Did you not see the bit with the slingshot?”

Raven gritted her teeth. “Why the hell do engineers always have to do things the most complicated way possible?”

“Because it’s fun. You seem like you could do with a little fun.”

“Tell that to the blister on my left heel!”

“Aw,” Wick said, but he didn’t sound very sympathetic. He jerked his head to indicate that Raven should follow him into the front room. At one of the screens, he entered his data. “Couldn’t have met you halfway, Reyes. Parts needed time to print.”

Raven paused. Of course the parts would have taken that long to print. She should have realized that herself. Any further protests died on her lips, and she said, very intelligently, “Oh.”

“And I’m so bummed you didn’t even like the coffee can. That part took the longest, if you’ll believe it.” Wick continued to type. “Anyway, I already sent this to your tablet, but here’s the schematics for the pressure regulator fix.” He waved his hand, spreading the various blueprints to different screens. “Elegant, isn’t it?”

Raven took one look at it and snorted. “I think you mean ‘impractical.’”

Wick scoffed. “Excuse you, I do not. This will fix the lack of the converters in that—”

“You’re using three times as many relay connectors as you could possibly ever need. Are you asking for this to short out within six months?” Raven goggled at the next screen. “And what’s up with that node placement? Do you want it to be _completely_ inaccessible for future mechanics?”

“It minimizes the possibility of drag—”

“Better insulator would fix that in a heartbeat.”

Usually this was the point where her instructors grew angry with her, even though she was never wrong, but Wick simply laughed a little under his breath. “So that’s how this is going to be,” he said.

“Yup,” Raven said.

“You’re professionally insulting me, just so you know,” he said, but he’d pulled out a stylus from his back pocket and he was already beginning to scribble all over the diagrams. “I mean, I don’t come in and tell you how to do your job, do I?”

“Well, in theory you do, but as we can see here, you’re kind of terrible at it.” Raven was struck, suddenly, with the weird urge to _smile_ , so she bit her bottom lip. Even then, the corners of her lips crept upward.

She hid her mouth behind her hand.

“Touché,” Wick said. “And I take it back: you _do_ know how to have fun. Is that better, Madame Despot?”

Raven studied the screen. He’d worked quickly, she had to admit, so even though he listened to idiotic music and didn’t seem to have matured beyond the age of twelve, he _did_ apparently know what he was talking about. He’d solved all three problems she’d brought to his attention within seconds. “I mean, it’s not perfect,” she said. “But I can fix it.”

“High praise indeed.” Wick tapped one final time on the screen and Raven’s tablet chirped with the notification of a new file. “Well, it’s been real, Reyes. Until next time?”

“Whenever that is. I’m not coming back here unless I absolutely have to.” Raven slung the bag of parts over her shoulder and headed for the door. Just before she left, though, she turned. “Should use a harrier fold on the paper airplane from now on. Get better stability.” Shooting him a two-finger salute, she left.

Only when she was outside did she allow herself to smile, but only for a few seconds. Wick was still an engineer, and therefore a giant pain the ass. She sighed and began the long trek back. She really _had_ to get her zero-g qualifications soon.

* * *

Though she was supposed to sleep during third shift, the mechanics bay was at its quietest, and Raven found it easiest just to slip in and review her notes then. Finn never complained, but he was an uneasy sleeper, and the light kept him up. Raven, however, Raven could go for days on catnaps and caffeine, and anything more than five hours a night felt like an indulgence. She worked second shift, slept for part of third, and always crept out as quietly as she could. Her workstation in the bay had by now become her home away from home. Others might think it was the messiest spot in the joint, but Raven knew that she could put her hand on any single one of her tools without needing to look.

Now she had her feet propped on the worktable, her tablet propped up against her knees. She’d memorized an exterior map of the station, but she was quizzing herself on it anyway when the tablet docked at the front of her worktable buzzed.

Wick’s picture, in which he stood tall and stroked his goatee like an evil madman, flashed across the screen. Sighing, Raven leaned forward and swiped to accept the comm.

“I _knew_ you were going to be there,” Wick said on audio only. “Reyes, babe, I mean this in the best possible way, but you’ve really got to get a life.”

“You can’t see me, but I’m flipping you off right now,” Raven said. “What do you want, Wick?”

“As much as it pains me to say, I need your help.”

“Finally going to admit your designs are flawed at the worst and quixotic at best?” 

“Oh, quixotic. I like that one.” There was a pause, like Wick was actually writing that down. “But as much as you wound me, Reyes, I need your help in an entirely different matter. It has come to my attention that you are female.”

“The boobs didn’t give it away?”

“Excuse me, I am a gentleman and did not notice.”

Raven snorted. Like hell he hadn’t noticed.

“And the fact of the matter is, that I am lacking in female companionship—”

“You’ve got a right hand for a reason.”

“I’m a leftie. And that’s not what I’m trying to get at. If you would let me finish?” Wick paused again, and Raven raised her eyebrows at the tablet, even though he couldn’t see her. “Very well, I see you are. I’m calling you because you’re the best lady friend I have, and I need an opinion.”

“Geez, Wick, ask somebody who wears a dress or something. I don’t have time for girly shit.”

“I highly doubt that. The opinion I need—which do you think is better?” On the other end of the line, something rustled, like Wick was searching through his things. “First option: ‘Did you know that chemists periodically do it on the table?’ And the second option—”

“Are you calling me to get my opinion on _pick-up lines_?” Raven asked, outright gawking at the tablet now.

“We’re friends. Friends help each other out. You didn’t let me finish again. You have the chemists pick-up line—”

“Which is terrible.”

“And then this one, and I’ll admit, I’m leaning toward it a little, which is, ‘Do you have eleven protons? Because, girl, you are _sodium_ fine.’”

Raven groaned. “I’m hanging up now.”

“The sodium one it is! Thanks, Reyes.”

“Bye, Wick.” And she ended the call, shaking her head (and smiling a little) as she returned to her studying.

* * *

Finn had been in the Skybox for two days.

Station law mandated that he remain inside for a week before he was allowed any visitors, so Raven had no idea how he was faring. She hadn’t seen him since he’d taken the suit from her. He was barely seventeen. There wouldn’t be a sentencing until his eighteenth birthday.

He’d taken the fall for her. He’d given her everything she’d ever wanted, and then he’d taken the blame for _her_ foolhardiness. It made Raven want to take a wrench and start swinging and smashing until there was nothing left of her worktable. She didn’t deserve any of it. She should burn in hell.

If he hadn’t done it, she’d be dead right now. Instead, he sat in prison.

“Ah, Reyes, just the person I wanted to see.” Wick stepped into the bay and dragged the stool from Sinclair’s station over—a big no-no among the mechanics. Raven could see a couple of the others shooting him a side-eye, wondering what an engineer was doing in the bay, but they were all too focused on their own projects to pay him too much mind.

Too bad she didn’t have that luxury. “What do you want, Wick?” she asked, her voice dull.

“Second shift knocked off two hours ago, which was how I knew I’d find you here.”

Of course he would. It was either that or her empty room, which echoed now that Finn was gone. They’d come to collect his things not even an hour after they’d taken him, making the room even emptier.

“And you’re over here because?” she asked.

“Brought you something. And no, before you can ask, it’s not a Rube Goldberg machine, though I considered a slingshot.” Wick reached into his jacket and placed a bottle on her worktable. “Ta-daaaa. This year’s vintage is especially promising. You can hardly taste the battery acid.”

Raven picked up the unlabeled bottle. The Green brewed products were always in a particular bottle shape. “Damn,” she said, impressed despite herself. “How’d you get your hands on one of these?”

“Please, like an engineer can’t outsmart the black market in his sleep.”

Raven looked at the bottle and thought of how many rations her mother had swapped for something similar. How she’d never even come close to scoring something like that. Her mood, already near rock bottom, sank even further. “Yeah,” was all she said.

Wick tilted his head and picked up the bottle, wiggling it around a little. “I was hoping to impress you a little more, but that’s okay, I’ll take it. You got any glasses here? I can handle the grease for one night.”

She waved at him to follow her when she got up. The mechanics all shared a little break room in the back, which would have to do because there wasn’t a chance in hell she was taking Wick back to her quarters. Who knew if he’d get any ideas? “Why are you bringing me alcohol?”

“I’m a little hurt that you’re asking me that. You’re a friend who’s going through a rough time. What _else_ would I do?”

Raven moved to the back cabinet and pulled out two dented tin mugs. Not the fanciest drinking glasses for Green Label alcohol, but they were clean and passable. She set them in front of Wick as he popped the cork. “I’m going to be honest,” she said, sitting down and folding her arms on the table. “I’m a little confused about where you got this idea that we’re friends, considering how mean I am to you.”

“You really must be feeling down,” Wick said. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“See? That’s exactly what I mean.”

Wick poured a generous helping of alcohol in each cup and handed one to her. “Sláinte,” he said, raising his cup and taking a healthy swallow. Raven did the same, and she made a face as the alcohol burned all the way down. It had been quite a while since her last meal. “Very well, Madame Despot, if we’re going to have our very own honesty hour, here it is: I don’t think you hate me nearly as much as you pretend to. I think you enjoy our delightful banter.”

“How much of this have you had?” Raven asked, looking at the clear liquid in her cup.

Wick laughed and pointed. “See, that’s precisely what I mean! You’ve finally found somebody on your level, greasemonkey, and you’re glad to have me around.”

“I don’t know if it’s glad so much as it’s you’re my own personal ball and chain.”

“You do say the sweetest things.” 

For a moment, she was tempted to laugh along with him. A small smile slipped out, though she quashed it. She wanted, desperately, in that moment to tell him that she was all alone now. Finn was the only person she’d had, and he was in prison because of something she had done. But she couldn’t tell Wick that, not without both of them eventually getting floated.

“So, we’re friends, then,” she said instead of spilling all of her secrets. “Buttering me up won’t make me any less honest about how much your designs suck.”

Wick twirled a finger over his head and downed the rest of his glass. “Please, you wouldn’t recognize a great design if it built itself and bit you in the ass.”

“If it’s one of your designs, I’d have to fix it before it would even get the chance to bite me in the ass.”

“And maybe I like the fact that you’re honest, even though more than half the time you’re wrong,” Wick said. “Like our banter, it keeps us both on our toes. Now, let’s have one more drink and then as my friend, you’re going to need to do something for me.”

“I knew this friendship came with ulterior motives,” Raven said, holding out her cup so Wick could splash more liquor in.

“Ulterior motives? Please. I just want you to get us both into the Mecha Station mess. Everybody on the Ark knows you guys have the best rations. And over dinner, we can discuss some modifications I want to make to our very first baby together.”

“I beg your pardon? Oh, you’re talking about the Hydra Station pressure regulator,” Raven said, and excitement built up in her stomach for the first time in over two days. She couldn’t wait, she realized, to butt heads over that repair. She downed her drink in one go and set the cup in the sink. “C’mon, let’s go get food.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Wick said, grinning as he followed her out.

Hours later, after Wick had stumbled back toward Power Station, more than a little in his cups from finishing the bottle with Raven, she returned to her quarters alone. She stood in the doorway, swaying slightly, and looked at the floor, missing Finn’s spare jacket and all of his metalworking tools, and the pit in her stomach finally began to recede a little. It wasn’t much, but in that moment, she felt a little less alone, and that was all that mattered.

She fell into bed and finally slept for the first time since Finn had been taken.


End file.
